Have you noticed
that nobody writes about printers anymore? We mean technology
writers. It seems like everybody's always writing about cell phones
or PDAs or digital cameras. That stuff's OK once in a while, but all
the time? Face it: We need printers.

This
is a lead-in to our going out last week and buying a new printer. We
bought an Okidata C5800 color laser that can print both sides of a
sheet of
paper at the same time. We paid $800. "Smart buy," the clerk said,
and he wasn't being sarcastic.

We had to buy one because Joy was
printing the second edition of her cookbook for a local woman's club
and wanted to be able to print on both sides of the paper. That's
called duplex printing.

We had been using a Magicolor 2300W
from Konica Minolta and reinserting printed pages to print on the
other side. It was a really good printer, but after a while it
started putting a smudge on every page.

In this way we learned you shouldn't
run printed pages through a laser printer a second time. Sooner or
later you're going to develop a smudge on the fuser assembly and
have to buy a new one. It will cost as much as buying a new printer.

Over the years, we've tried just about
every brand and type of printer made, including many that aren't
made anymore. The best ones have been from Konica and Okidata.

This gives Bob an opportunity to tell
his Okidata printer story. It goes like this: Years ago, Bob had
this huge, heavy Okidata dot matrix printer, and he accidentally
pushed it off the edge of the desk. It hit the floor and bounced and
then went bumpity-bump down a long flight of stairs. He brought it
back up and plugged it in, and everything worked fine, as if nothing
had happened.

Weight could be a significant factor in Okidata printers. This new
color laser printer weighs about 57 pounds, which is 10 pounds
heavier than the other color lasers we've used. Very heavy duty. It
prints so fast that we were waiting a few seconds for a printout
when Bob noticed it was already out.

Build
Your Own Keyboard

The DX1 keyboard from Ergodex lets you put up to 25 keys wherever
you want them.

You start with a smooth pad, measuring 9.4-by-11 inches, that's
sensitive to radio frequencies. The 25 keys come with tiny built-in
transmitters. They can be mapped
for specific functions or macros and positioned anywhere on the
board that seems best for the way you use them. Gamers, engineers
and stock or commodity traders, who often perform the same actions
over and over, would likely be the ideal users here.

Once positioned on the board, the keys stick there, but they can be
released and moved to a new location with a slight twist. You can
actually hold a key a little distance above the board, cupped in
your hand, and it will still function.

The Ergodex software can also recognize program changes. So if you
start using Photoshop, the keys will immediately be ready to execute
functions and macros you set up for Photoshop.

This is an interesting device and can probably be put to a lot more
uses than we can think of. It's $150 at
Dell.com or
Ergodex.com.

Clusty.com is just about our favorite search engine because it
clusters the hits into categories. But that's beside the point right
now because we couldn't resist searching for the "fretful porpentine."
This is a phrase that pops up once
in a while in the "Bertie and Jeeves" stories by P.G. Wodehouse.

The two words and surrounding text came up immediately and turned
out to be from a speech by the Ghost in "Hamlet." Shakespeare
undoubtedly meant "porcupine," not "porpentine," but spelling was
loose back then.

The
Secret Code

OpenDNS.com gives you a free alternative to your Internet service
provider during a DNS outage.

"DNS" stands for Domain Name System, and that's basically the phone
book for the Internet. When you type in a domain name, like
OnComp.com, or Yahoo.com, DNS translates the name to the numerical
address that the computer can understand.

Knowing where to get an alternative DNS service can be useful at
times. For instance, the large ISP Comcast had a DNS outage last
year, meaning they couldn't translate the Web addresses into their
numerical codes. That was no problem for users who had followed the
instructions at OpenDNS.com.

Some users say following those instructions results in faster
service, but we didn't notice any difference. OpenDNS also warns you
if you're about to visit dangerous Web sites, the so-called
"phishing" sites.

Pretty
Crafty

AmericanCraftExpo.org
is the Web site for the prestigious American crafts show held each
year on the campus of Northwestern University. All the craftiest
people
are there, and you can see pictures of their work and contact the
artists through this site. We especially liked the miniature planets
made by Josh Simpson. He also has his own Web site:
Megaplanet.com, as do many
of the other artists.

NOTE: Readers can search several years of columns here at
oncomp.com or seven years worth of columns at
oncomp2.com